Pages

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

This year, Crispy Sharp is going to be working a lot to promote
the Wotever DIY Film Festival
– a three-day festival that celebrates independent and lo-fi queer filmmaking
held primarily at the Cinema Museum in London.There will be a handful of feature films, a much larger amount of
shorts, discussions & debates and workshops – and lots of booze and
giggles.

The submission window is now open for this year’s event, with the
deadline being the 31st May.Below is a description in their own words about what they are looking
for:

“We are looking for short films up to 30 minutes
on a queer theme. However, we will prioritise films 15 minutes and under.
Feature length films will be considered although please be aware we have very
limited space for these. All films need to be DIY or independent films of any
genre on a queer theme. We have a particular interest in films about queer
people and queer culture reclaiming space. Other than that, our only criteria is
that they must be in keeping with our Wotever ethos and as such we will not
consider submissions that are racist, misogynist, transphobic, homophobic,
ableist, sizeist, feature religious intolerance or are in any way prejudiced or
exclusionary towards a particular group or identity. We are always trying to
improve accessibility at Wotever DIY Film Festival and with that we assert that
all filmmakers selected for the festival must work to commit to subtitling
their films.

We welcome films that push the boundaries of
queer thinking and ideology, are thought-provoking and progressive. Saying
that, we also appreciate a nice queer-meets-queer love story, slap stick comedy
or music video we can dance to."

All submissions must use the official submission form and be available
for download or streaming to be viewed by the programming team.For more information and to get access to the
form or to ask a question please contact Theresa & Tara at woteverfilm@gmail.com (so far I’ve met
half of them; they’re super lovely…)

There is more information on last year’s event at the links below as well as upcoming
news. I will also definitely have them as a guest on the Crispy Sharp Podcast in the coming weeks to explain more...

When you’re younger, the relationships
you have feel like they’re going to last forever.Your first proper boyfriend/girlfriend feels
like your soul mate and your BFFs seem like they will be with you for life.And when you inevitably drift apart from someone
that you used to love, can you ever reunite and recapture what made you so
close in the first place?This profound
question is the heart of writer/director Harry
McQueen’s debut film Hinterland.

Harvey (McQueen) and Lola (Lori Campbell), two young Londoners who
have been friends forever, decided to reunite after her long spell travelling
the world to go for a weekend away in his parent’s house in Cornwall.That is the entire plot, and it's utterly gripping...

Saturday, February 21, 2015

‘Yeah, but it wasn’t as good as the
book’ is one of the most common phrases to be heard when discussing literary
adaptations with film fans.So often the
argument goes that the nature of prose allows for a richer and more
three-dimensional understanding of plot, back story or character’s inner
monologues and motivations.But what if
a novel has notoriously bad examples of these three things; can it then ever be
a good movie?

Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) is a young virginal
English Lit major who has gotten the chance to interview Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) , a
27-year-old telecommunications billionaire.During the interview she is intimidated by him and embarrasses herself,
so she is all the more surprised when he begins to pursue her outside of work
and they begin dating (kind of…)

It is only after a few dates does she
realise his obsession with having ‘control over all things’ and has a literal
manifestation in a private playroom in his apartment full of…toys.

Sunday, February 8, 2015

When Seth Rogen’s new geopolitical comedy The Interview was nearing its theatrical release in America, the
distributors Sony made international news by seemingly bowing to supposed
threats made from North Korea and pulled the movie.This drastic reaction was widely derided and
quickly reversed with a limited run in cinemas on Christmas Day followed by a
bigger release and VoD campaign, which in turn garnered enormous global
attention from the news media.Cynics amongst
us might conclude that this was just an enormous PR stunt in one of the most
postmodern film release strategies ever conceived, or you might agree that the
provocative narrative really was worthy of international tensions and threats
of violence…

Dave Skylark (James Franco) is a
narcissistic, vain and imbecilic TV talk show host who has a talent for
interviewing a-list celebrities and making them reveal their secrets and hidden
talents.His hit show is kept together
by his producer and best friend Aaron Rapaport (Rogen), who dreams of doing
something less trivial and more important with the show and the wide audience
that it is has developed.After an
interview with Rob Lowe (about baldness) gets cut short due to a interrupting
news update about tensions with North Korea, Skylark discovers that Kim Jong-Un
is a fan of his and so tries to appease Rapaport by securing an interview with
the dictator.Much to their amazement,
the supreme leader agrees so they celebrate by getting wrecked on super-strength
ecstasy.

The next morning they get a visit from
the CIA who have a proposition for them to ‘take out’ Kin Jong-Un using a
special poison, but when they arrive in Pyongyang Skylark begins to recognize
himself in the lonely dictator and starts to doubt the mission…